How I Experience Web Today (2021)

I get that, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people whose job content is, and who may have had the same job in the 90s, e.g. newspaper journalists.

So I'm asking those who don't want to pay for a subscription, but want to use an ad blocker: How does it work?

As said, I opted for paying the creator directly, because I hate the ad ecosystem. Seems like a lot of people want to do neither, but still expect their content to magically exist.

Many of my favourite blogs are ad-free. The people behindert it just do it with passion and don't expect anything in return. This is in contrast to nrwspapets and magazines, which just pump out clickbait shit while bring full of ads and tracking. Another option is the patreon/twitch model, where people Sonate money to creators.

Lots of us don’t want to pay a dime because it’s like negotiating with terrorists. Do you really expect the people that ruined the web to act nice after the first round of extortion goes well for them? Many paid services still have ads and dark patterns. Those that don’t are waiting for a position of strength (whether that is a market monopoly or just user sunk-cost fallacy to kick in) and then the enshittification will start.

My heart goes out to journalists, etc, but I can’t really help them by paying their bosses because the bosses are not interested in journalism. If you think that paying into rent-seeking protection rackets is any kind of permanent solution you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Yes, the irony I have seen with written content is, with the exception being books, most paid written content is still crap.

> Lots of us don’t want to pay a dime because it’s like negotiating with terrorists.

For a concrete example of the implacable amorality of advertising, consider how cable-TV once offered the promise of subscribing to end the ads, but still ended up showing you ads and demanding a subscription fee anyway. Then the same pattern happened again with online streaming services and Youtube: Every would-be savior keeps getting corrupted by the same darkness.

I choose to do both.

uBlock Origin everywhere. Steven Black host list on everything that can use /etc/hosts. Subscriptions to the things I value (but not to all the things I read).

I run an open source project called Ardour. One of our mottos is "It doesn't matter if everybody pays, it only matters than enough people pay". I wish more people could make some effort try to follow this idea in some way.

The only folks expecting the content to "magically continue to exist" are folks who lack information. But folks who do have information may also be totally fine with neither paying for content nor seeing ads; for a lot of us, the content that we watch is pretty transitive and if it went away tomorrow because no one watched any ads, we'd go do something else.

Or consider the commuter that is obliged to pay hundreds a week for gas, and is assaulted by ads at obnoxious volumes while they fill up. Or the jet passenger that endures ads on what should be the PA that is reserved for emergency communications, after they’ve been gouged on ticket prices, because hey, why not monetize a captive audience for all they are worth? Does a first class ticket buy the right to avoid harassment? Everything points to “not for long”..

The point is that "people whose job content is" should just get a regular job, where they actually contribute something valuable to society. All these "news" websites that are 90% ads can just die, to make room for valuable sites in the search results.

Joke’s on them, I just don’t listen to the PA.

At some point, you stop selling content, and you start selling an audience with a known demographic to advertisers.

In such a market, the business is disincentivized to produce thoughtful content, and need to churn the bait the draw in the audience. So it isn't as if creators are being compensated for creating, and instead content producers are compensated for producing words that will lure in readers.